It matters if you think of your business in terms of numbers or as a story
A.K.A No more business for the sake of business
Why do you want to succeed in business?
“Because I have failed so much that I need to show myself that that's where all of it was leading. I want to help people with the knowledge and experience that I now have in this field. My success will be a win for us all”
“Well…cus money.”
I wonder which of these businesses I would, regularly, patronize. Not really.
Everyone wants success so bad but what makes your success matter? What makes your success important to the world?
Stories are about bigger pictures, about expanded world views. They are about showing the different sides to one thing, delving into the meaning behind the meaning.
I love stories, always have, probably always will but recently I’m beginning to see that I need stories; we all need stories.
The powerful mixture of empathy, understanding, healing, joy, sadness, pain etc. that they provide are necessary to us experiencing the world properly.
Removed from stories, our world views are too tiny, our perspectives too narrow. A story is beyond stringing words together; it is in the picture and the feelings that those words elicit, the understanding that they grant to the reader.
After breaking down stories into these bits of what it means (to me at least), it may be hard to relate it to businesses.
Numbers seem to be a better way to couch the reality of business; the race for money and profit.
One reason that you should not do that, however, is because it is harder to see people when you are concerned about numbers and business is about people.
It is about the people you are trying to make customers, it is about the people you will hire to build your dream along with you and it is about you.
When you take away people, you do not have a business and stories have always been a key way to hold people’s interest.
When you take away people, you do not have a business and stories have always been a key way to hold people’s interest.
If you don’t care about your story (which we all now just call branding) your employees are not going to care about it either.
If you don’t care about your story, the customers you are trying to attract are not going to care about it either.
Now, this is the chief problem of still thinking about business in terms of numbers in this day and age; people now have the agency to choose businesses who choose them and to influence other people to do the same.
Your numbers are just a part of your story
Turn a profit? Make a loss? Increase engagement? Everything is just a part of your story which you can in turn tell the people around you to get them even more invested in where you are going.
All good stories have their high-lows. No one would want to watch a film that strikes the same emotional chord from start to finish; no plot twists, no story arc, just one straight uninspiring line.
Businesses in this age must engage the beauty of compelling storytelling and of course to tell a good tale you have to have a good tale to tell. The world will not have a space for business for the sake of business for much longer.
Business for the sake of business
- The shop on your street corner that just sells stuff
- Mediocre sites that rely solely on clickbait to get traffic
Businesses that are not exactly value-adding, that can shut down today and no one would miss them. This is how I define business for the sake of business.
Ron McDaniel in his article “Is Your Job Value-Adding or Obsolete?” defines a value-adding job as a job that needs to be done to make people’s lives better (beyond the worker and business) and a value-adding business can be summed up in much the same way.
Value-addition must be at the heart of any business and this makes storytelling easier because you are invariably telling people about themselves instead of just talking about you and your needs all the time.
Stories always have a way of coming back around
The best stories always have a way of coming back around even if they end on a tragic note and that is really how a legacy is made, not by numbers as important as they are.
A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.”
― Shannon L. Alder
Your business needs to get a jump on the stories that others will share about you. This culture of storytelling will start with you. Do you know the why of your business and can you pass that why down to your employees because they carry the responsibility next before your loyal customers and then the rest of the world.
Use everything in your power to tell a good story.
